Shrinking Free Space
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I have a month-old computer with a 64GB Falcon SSD for my OS and my most frequently played games. After I first installed the OS and all my games I had roughly 13GB of free space. Everything I’ve downloaded and installed since then has gone on my secondary drive; I have not added anything new to the primary drive. Despite this, I now have just 137MB free on my primary drive and am getting warnings of low disk space. Where is my available space going? I did a disk clean-up and that hardly freed any space. I’m running 64-bit Vista SP1. Any help would
be appreciated.
—Devin Binning
Without knowing more about the programs you’re installing (for example, Adobe Creative Suite 3 requires substantial C: drive space even if you’re installing it on a different drive), it’s hard for us to give useful advice. Our gut says to check your Documents folder. By default, Vista stores saved games and other application data in your Documents folder on the C: drive; you might be filling up with game data or even temporarily stored Internet files. We suggest downloading and installing a visual data manager like WinDirStat (http://windirstat.info) or SpaceSniffer (http://bit.ly/ssniff), which will show you exactly which files are taking up all of your space. You can then move them to your secondary drive or delete them at your leisure.
Graphical drive-space utilities like WinDirStat (shown) and SpaceSniffer let you see at a glance exactly which files are taking up precious hard disk space.
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tdk650
November 11, 2009 at 12:05pm
I would also move all browser cache's to your other drive, you can look it up depending on your browser. I also would disable Page File, and move your windows temp folders to the other drive, its under System Properties under the Advanced Tab and its in the setting button under performance.
You can try this if your computer is stable with no issues, turn off System Restore like someone else mentioned which will free up space. Then turn it back on if you like system restore and create a restore point, doing it once a month will help.
Use CCleaner as others have mentioned.
nsk chaos
October 31, 2009 at 10:58am
i have this problem too but ccleaner helps keep it down...by a lot
Raspop
October 31, 2009 at 12:05am
I've seen error reports pile up on machines with a hardware/software problem. Also, show your protected operating system files (folder options/view/uncheck "Hide protected...") in your C drive to check how much space hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys are taking up. They get almost 8gigs on my computer - Win7 x64. Killing or relocating system restore isn't a bad idea for small HD's either.
TechJunkie
October 30, 2009 at 4:57pm
System restore in vista is a resource hog. I sat and watched my 500GB (465GB usable) (after everything I wanted installed was 437GB free) dwindle considerably and constantly down to 320GB in just a few weeks. I set out to find the culprit and as it turned out, it was system restore. I turned that sucker off and regained all my space back.
I found out that vista keeps your restore points for a lengthy amount of time eating at HDD available space. Even setting it at 4GB, or less, to use for backup consumes space over time. So I flipped that puppy back on and every few days or so, I delete previous restore points to regain my space.
fnordfnord
October 30, 2009 at 6:58pm
There is an easier way to your problem and it's integrated right in Windows since Windows XP (maybe even older)
It's
part of the disk cleanup utility. Simply right click a drive >
properties > disk cleanup. Wait a bit until the new window appears
then more options tab > clean up... button in system restore
section. Clicking this button deletes every restore point but the last
one. Safe & practical.
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